ZTE Open Firefox OS smartphone will be an eBay exclusive

ZTE has announced that it plans to sell the ZTE Open, it's Firefox OS smartphone, exclusively on eBay. The new smartphone will be sold on both the UK and US eBay sites and will be priced at £59.99 ($79.99). The timescale given for the ZTE Open to appear in eBay listings is "soon" (Friday, reports TechCrunch). This smartphone is already available and being sold by Telefonica in Spain, Colombia and Venezuela, however this is the first time it will be available in orange (not the network Orange, the colour).

As well as being unlocked to use on any mobile network the ZTE Open "is powered by Firefox OS, which frees developers, operators and consumers from the constraints of existing closed ecosystems by using the Web as the platform for all functionality and applications". The smartphone runs applications written in HTML5 language and most of the staple smartphone functionality is built-in including; calls, messaging, email, web browsing and camera as well as the 'social-integration' of Facebook and Twitter. Beyond these basics you can use Nokia HERE maps and many other apps downloadable from the Firefox Marketplace. The Firefox OS is also supposed to provide "exceptional security, privacy, customization and user control" which may have particular appeal to some users.

The VP of ZTE Corp, Dai Wenhong, said"It is great honour to launch the ZTE Open Firefox OS phone worldwide through eBay". It sounds like he's never used eBay before, the last time I sold something via eBay it definitely wasn't a great honour. Besides that, it might be a good idea to launch this accessibly priced new smartphone this way; to cheaply set up an eBay shop and gauge the potential of these Firefox OS smartphones in the established UK and US markets.

Always good to see a new competitor in the OS market, but agree with others, resolution and low res screen will do it no favours.

For nearly all phones under £150 the internal memory kills it for me, there's not enough space to load any additional apps. I've had issues previously trying to download apps to SD card and most of them won't run properly or require some sort of fudge to get them to work…..it should be standard and require zero additional input from the user.